I wonder what the real reason is behind welfare reform?

Welfare (pensions, OOW benefits etc) and the NHS are paid for solely by NI contributions. The government is not allowed to touch this money but it may borrow from any surplus; the yearly surplus is around £2bn.

The coalition rhetoric of "taxpayers are sick of seeing blinds closed when they go out to work" and all the other rubbish they spout is either ignorant stupidity or malevolent divisiveness, because tax has nothing to do with it.

NI contributions may not be used for any other purpose than welfare, so why does the government want to cut benefits and introduce private pensions for everybody? Gideon Osborne spoke in 2011 of possibly combining tax and NI. This would give him access to a huge pool of money that is specifically earmarked, by Statute, for healthcare and welfare - he would want to use it for other purposes.

Tax credits, on the other hand, do come out of the tax budget; however this money doesn't subsidise poorly paid workers, it arguably subsidises businesses so they do not have to pay a living wage.

Basically, I don't see how the government can legally include the welfare budget in its programme of cuts. There may be an argument for making the welfare system more efficient but any cuts or changes would not affect the government's budget.

No I don't. But I agree with many of its positions just like the millions who buy it and the hundreds of millions who make it the world's number one online newspaper do.

I defend the Daily Mail because of all the attacks on it and the millions who support it, by progressives who want to stop it revealing the truth on issues such as climate change, overseas aid and many other political issues.

I believe in a free press, not gagged or regulated by politicians, which contrinbutes to public policy creation by discussing political issues. That is why I want a free Guardian to publish whatever it likes and a free Daily Mail to piblish whatever it likes.

I don't like the attempts to discredit the world's leading online newspaper and to discredit its millions of good readers by a bunch of often privately educated politically motivated Oxbridge progressive spin doctors who want to pull the wool over the public's eyes.

flap there is a big difference between a government or a go telling you what to eat and a system where how you spend your money is controlled by the government.

In one case, you can chose not to follow the advice. You can even choose not to have chemo for a cancer. But in the second case, you have no other choice than doing whatever is expected from you. If benefits are given out, it's for several reasons. 1- to ensure that no one is dying of hunger or cold anymore. 2- to ensure no CHILD is dying of hunger or malnutrition anymore. 3- so that everyone can be part of the big economic market. Not for their own convenience but because otherwise, our system, that is based onto growth, can't work anymore. You need buyers to keep the economy going. None of this is done from a charitable basis. Nor is it done with the idea that people have to pay back one way or the other (eg showing how grateful they are that the state is giving them something to eat by following some rules such as what they can eat or do)..It has been done because it would be bad for the economy if we were not doing so. But none of items anyone needs to give up their liberty and rights as an individual.

The economic effect of slashing welfare to the bone is to ensure that people will fight for, and grimly hang onto, any job, no matter how crap the pay is or how shittily they're treated.

Obviously this aligns with the interests of business, and hence the Tories.

Throw in all that crap about slashing red tape and 'elf and safety'... You have a workforce you can pay peanuts, and if they balk at, say, handling dangerous chemicals without safety kit, you can sack them instantly with no comeback. What's not to love?

Of course Mick Philpott is a hideous individual, but he is as representative of the poor as Hans and Eva Rausing are of the rich...

Those of us with a shred of humanity, those of us on even nodding terms with basic human decency might choose to spend a few moments today reflecting on the horrific tragedy that befell six of Mick Philpotts children. We might even go a little further and feel an indescribable rage towards a man, a so-called father, being the conscious architect of the demise of six of his seventeen  yes, seventeen  children.

In a cynical and twisted plot, the jury at Nottingham Crown Court learned, this selfish and misogynistic creature deliberately started a fire and attempted to frame his neighbour all with the intent of appearing the hero by rescuing his children. At the same time visiting revenge upon the hapless neighbour who had slept with his partner. Theres more than enough there to sicken anyone.

Not the Daily Mail, though. For them a human tragedy of this nature is simply an opportunity to push even further their revolting and immoral class agenda. Todays front page, emblazoned as it is with the banner headline, Vile Product Of Welfare UK says everything about a tabloid whose connection to the lofty ideals and principles of the Fourth Estate is as tenuous as those of the Tory party to compassion and equality.

In one sense, theres little new here; the putrid rag, right from its Hitler-glorifying headline, Hurrah for The Blackshirts all the way to the present day, has consistently articulated the most vile prejudices and bigotries of its blue-rinsed, would-be middle-class, Conservative readership. On the other hand, the stomach-turning cynicism of both the sentiment and timing of todays front-page marks a new low for a publication one might reasonably have concluded couldnt possibly sink any lower. Inside the house of depravity: Two giant TVs, a snooker room but the children were barely fed by Mick Philpott whose sordid lifestyle beggars belief! screams the Hate Mail, in its usual strident tones of sanctimony and sneering self-righteousness.

After a veritable onslaught of vituperation, lies and sheer malice aimed at those out of work, the disabled, single mothers and immigrants alike, the Daily Mail has been a key driver in fomenting a culture of hate against the nations poor and underprivileged. Lurid and hysterical attacks, based often on outright lies, are its disgusting stock in trade. And in a week when the poor have been hammered yet further by the introduction of the Bedroom Tax and other heartless and spiteful cuts to benefits, its nothing less than vomit-inducing that the toilet-paper tabloid seeks to make political capital out of such an emotionally-charged and appalling crime.

Of course, the wretched parents in this contemptible episode are as much a product of the welfare state as Peter Sutcliffe is of the Road Haulage Association. Or Beverly Allitt is of the Royal College of nursing. What they might well be a product of, though, is neoliberal free-market economics; a system where the only possible measurements of value are those that can be entered on a spread-sheet in pounds and pence. A society that sees its workforce as nothing more than a resource to be employed, abused and then sacked at will, depending on the whims of the market. A culture that deems it perfectly moral, no; necessary even, to scapegoat the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed and working poor alike and view them as merely cannon fodder in an on-going class war. The sole purpose of which is to enrich still further those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom. In such a society, one that utterly distorts our natural humanity and produces the most grotesque and aberrant human behaviour in pursuit of wealth, why should we expect anything different from those at the bottom of the social order?

One might also wish to consider the nauseating hypocrisy of its editor, Paul Dacre. This repellent caricature of a press man sanctions, daily, attacks on scroungers when the rich and Conservative demagogues, whose cause he so enthusiastically champions, freely use British infrastructure, resources and personnel to acquire their ill-gotten gains. And then promptly shift the loot off-shore to avoid paying their fair share of income tax. Scroungers eh? You bet.

In conclusion, then, we can be certain of several things; the Daily Mail, along with its troglodyte scribblers and hacks, who laughably pass for journalists, are an affront to decency, fairness and honesty. With todays headline they have confirmed their standing as the most toxic faecal lump floating in the sewer of British tabloid journalism. The comments in response to the rags noxious online edition of the Philpott article confirms, beyond any doubt, thats its readers are stupidly ignorant, cruel and spiteful bigots. Following all this, though, we can also be sure of thing more; they, and the Daily Mail, spit in the very face of humanity.

> I defend the people and the people's paperr. That is why I defend the Daily Mail against the smears of the progressives.

Do you have any idea that you sound more and more like a fascist, defending a reactionary right-wing populist newspaper which attacks immigrants, poor people, homosexuals and anyone else who falls outside the narrow, bigoted, small-minded, little-Englander view of England?

Far from 'The Peoples Paper' ("Volkszeitung"?), it is the a paper which merely re-enforces the prejudices of a subset of the population, and attacks anyone else who falls outside of this subset.

The Daily Heil has consistently supported fascism and fascists - not just in WWII, but more recently with their support for the National Front in France.

It's really sad to see you support such a newspaper. I'm sure you genuinely believe you're fighting for 'the people', but you are deeply misguided if you think the Daily Mail represents the interests of 'the people'. It doesn't.

'Do you have any idea that you sound more and more like a fascist, defending a reactionary right-wing populist newspaper which attacks immigrants, poor people, homosexuals and anyone else who falls outside the narrow, bigoted, small-minded, little-Englander view of England?'

I don't recognise your depiction of the world's leading online newspaper. The paper that was awarded Newspaper of the Year 2012 by the Society of Editors and which fought for years on behalf of the Lawrence family.

Just because Tony Blair may possibly not like the Daily Mail, doesn't mean that the millions who read it online every day are bigots or fascists.

The real reason behind the benefit cuts is simply. The Tories have an inherent loathing of the welfare state, and the role of the State, and they are using the deficit as a cover to get rid of it. And the BBC media are compliant.

The reason for "welfare reform" is that it allows a severe attack on wages and working rights. You can see this already with 0 hours contracts - people must be desperate for anything - and in stagnating and falling wages.

The BBC is compliant because there is a tory bigwig sitting on it (chris patten).

Just wanted to point out that A4E signed their first contract with the government for the "New Deal" in 1998 and "pathway to work" in 2008. So if you want to be more correct, both Labour, Conservatives & the lib dems have been handing out our taxes to A4E for a long time now.

well, the reason the Tories did it was because it was popular according to the opinion polls.(But not with poor people.) The reason they left the elderly alone. Was because lots of them are said to vote Tory. (not me)